Some of you may never have heard the song “I Gotta Be Me.” I can’t honestly say you’re in for a treat. But the song’s title expresses something I find true, in several different ways. And truth is usually helpful, when and if you can find some.

We all have to be ourselves. Even if you are totally unhappy with who you are and desperately want to become someone else, in the end, that’s you, wanting (pretending?) to be someone else. Fortunately or unfortunately, we cannot escape being who we are.

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

This episode is for anyone who hears the word “meditate” and ask themselves, “Why the hell would I do that??”

It's also for anyone who says, “Meditation sounds awful! Like I’m supposed to just sit there and do nothing? I’m not even supposed to think? Yuk!”

Perhaps more specifically: this episode is for people who say things like this about meditation, but are open to changing their minds.

What can be said about simply sitting still, with an upright spine, for a short time each day?

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

At times, working in NYC as a hospice nurse, I was responsible for pronouncing a patient’s death.

It didn’t happen often. But when it did, it seemed to me I was told to record the “time of death” in a pretty random and arbitrary way.

This episode is looking back and trying to make sense of that weird responsibility.

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

Just what the title says.

However much truth there is in our “being individuals” and “being separate,” there is just as much truth in saying all observed distinctions are, to some extent: invented, created, imagined, made-up, fabricated, unreal.

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

Liking and disliking feel like completely different experiences. And, of course, they are. As different as noon and midnight.

But it’s interesting to look at how liking and disliking are, in many ways, the same.

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

We all have ways of proving who we are.

We use credentials literally (driver’s license, high school diploma) and figuratively (I am someone who is like this and not like that.)

What happens if you see that all credentials are essentially empty? Can you still “be someone” if you don’t have any credentials?

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

I went to a recent meditation retreat recently. There were many people who noted afterwards, “Wow! A lot of people seemed to go really deep.”

I knew exactly what they meant. I felt it as well. And yet: all we were doing was sitting on some meditation cushions. We literally did not go anywhere.

After we sat, we would stand up and do walking meditation. Even then, we were simply walking around in a big circle. (Again, not going anywhere.) Then we’d sit down, become still and meditate some more.

Where are we “going” when we go deep?

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.

There are many people who search for unconditional love. I wanted to devote an episode to explaining this idea: finding unconditional love is as impossible as counting to infinity.

The world we live in is a world of forms, a world of conditions. You cannot have forms without conditions.

Where does the world of forms “come from?” Well, we can call it the “formless” or the “unconditional,” and that’s hopefully on the right track. But “The Unconditional” isn’t a “thing” that can “give” anything to “you.” If The Unconditional existed as a form, it would no longer be unconditional.

We aren’t going to find unconditional love just like we aren’t going to find a pot of gold at the bottom of a rainbow. What is it we are looking for?

I hope more clarity around why unconditional love is impossible will lead to more realistic cultivation of actual conditions where actual conditional love can grow.

Visit the podcast website at tencrutches.link to download the free ebook Ten Crutches For Walking In The Present.

Show notes are here.